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Baum warns against Stuttgart’s “quality group of players”

Time for FCA to dust themselves off and look ahead after Friday night’s 2-0 defeat in Leipzig: Manuel Baum’s have turned their attention to next Saturday’s home game against VfB Stuttgart with preparations commencing on Tuesday morning. The FCA boss joined us after the training session to talk about the following:

The defeat in Leipzig: “Not a single aspect of our game was as good as against Frankfurt. The problems started in our build-up play, where we weren’t brave enough in my opinion. We’d planned to prevent Leipzig from pressing, but we invited them forward too much. When we were pressing, on the other hand, the gaps were too big, especially in the second half. The really disappointing thing is that the two goals came from set-pieces.”

Analyses with his players: “It’s always interesting to see how the players feel a few days after a game; I’m not on the pitch after all and I only see the video afterwards. What I like about our players is that their post-match analyses are often very similar to ours and they take criticism well, without taking anything personally. It’s all about improving together as a team.”

His team’s possession: “When you’re on the ball, you need those players off the ball to have good positioning, along with good decision-making from the player in possession. Before the winter break when we were against ten-man Wolfsburg, we gave a perfect example of how to do this. We can do it, but we need to keep refreshing and improving it. If we do that, then I’m sure it will get much better.”

The next opponents: “Stuttgart have a clear and simple structure with a number of former Germany internationals in Zieler, Gomez, Aogo, Beck and Badstuber – they’re a quality group. We can’t go in thinking that we’ll play them off the park just because they’re quite far down in the table. In terms of the clubs’ status, I would even go as far as saying Stuttgart are favourites.”

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